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Entry: Against Unselfishness Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/against_unselfishness#18408 Post contents: Re Mr. Konkola's statement: "Some examples of what used to be required for properly mortified pride/ self-love: if you find yourself getting angry at insults under any circumstances, that is a sign of unmortified pride/sinful self-love." Okay, if that was the standard which Christian confessors were recommending, I can respond to it clearly: I reject it. It's not humility, it's masochism, of an almost clinical variety. Were that sort of thing essential to Christianity, it would indeed be the "slave morality" that some have called it. I doubt very much that the knights who fought the Crusades, the kings who built Christendom, the fathers who protected and nurtured families and populated it, the aristocrats who endowed monasteries, the peasants who defended their rights against rapacious land-barons, the Irishmen who resisted the depredations of the humble, loving Puritans who happened to be attempting to exterminate them, practiced any such attitude. On the other hand, I can certainly imagine the bishops who are demolishing the Episcopal church reacting this way to Moslem clerics threatening to impose Sharia. If that was the sort of thing the clergy were dispensing, I'm sure everyday Christians knew enough to take it with a grain of salt--and wonder how it served the clergy's interest to make the laity so very accommodating. Sent at: 2008 08 30